Archaeological research and current global climate change : Building archaeological strategies for increasing the resilience of social-ecological systems

Abstract. Extreme events are part of climate variability. Dealing with variability is still a challenge that might be increased due to climate change. However, impacts of extreme events are not only dependent on their variability, but also on management and governance. In Brazil, its semi-arid region is vulnerable to extreme events, especially droughts, for centuries. Actually, other Brazilian regions that have been mostly concerned with floods are currently also experiencing droughts. This article evaluates how a combination between climate variability and water governance might affect water scarcity and increase the impacts of extreme events on some regions. For this evaluation, Ostrom's framework for analyzing social-ecological systems (SES) was applied. Ostrom's framework is useful for understanding interactions between resource systems, governance systems and resource users. This study focuses on social-ecological systems located in a drought-prone region of Brazil. Two extreme events were selected, one in 1997–2000, when Brazil's new water policy was very young, and the other one in 2012–2015. The analysis of SES considering Ostrom's principle "Clearly defined boundaries" showed that deficiencies in water management cause the intensification of drought's impacts for the water users. The reasons are more related to water management and governance problems than to drought event magnitude or climate change. This is a problem that holdup advances in dealing with extreme events.

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Palaeoenvironmental proxies indicate long-term development of agro-pastoralist landscapes in Inner Asian mountains

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-04546-4 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Michael Spate ◽

Mumtaz A. Yatoo ◽

Dan Penny ◽

Mohammad Ajmal Shah ◽

Alison Betts

Keyword(s):

Ecological Systems ◽

Archaeological Research ◽

Kashmir Valley ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Environmental Perturbations ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Arid Conditions ◽

Mountain Landscapes ◽

Term Management

AbstractA growing body of archaeological research on agro-pastoralist populations of the Inner Asian mountains indicates that these groups adapted various systems of mobile herding and cultivation to ecotopes across the region from as early as 5000 BP. It has been argued that these adaptations allowed the development of flexible social-ecological systems well suited to the long-term management of these mountain landscapes. At present, less attention has been paid to examining the long-term ecological legacy of these adaptations within the sedimentary or palaeoenvironmental record. Here we present sediment, palynomorph and charcoal data that we interpret as indicating agro-pastoralist environmental perturbations, taken from three cores at middle and high altitudes in the Kashmir Valley at the southern end of the Inner Asian mountains. Our data indicate spatially and temporally discontinuous patterns of agro-pastoralist land use beginning close to 4000 BP. Periods of intensification of upland herding are often coincident with phases of regional social or environmental change, in particular we find the strongest signals for agro-pastoralism in the environmental record contemporary with regionally arid conditions. These patterns support previous arguments that specialised agro-pastoralist ecologies across the region are well placed to respond to past and future climate deteriorations. Our data indicating long-term co-evolution of humans and landscape in the study area also have implications for the ongoing management of environments generally perceived as “pristine” or “wilderness”.

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Restoring our senses, restoring the Earth. Fostering imaginative capacities through the arts for envisioning climate transformations

Elem Sci Anth ◽

10.1525/elementa.330 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Diego Galafassi ◽

J. David Tàbara ◽

María Heras

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

Assessment Process ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Average Temperature ◽

Social Ecological ◽

The Earth ◽

The Arts ◽

Funded Project ◽

Current Governance

Humanity has never lived in a world of global average temperature above two degrees of current levels. Moving towards such High-End Climate Change (HECC) futures presents fundamental challenges to current governance structures and involves the need to confront high uncertainties, non-linear dynamics and multiple irreversibilities in global social-ecological systems. In order to face HECC, imaginative practices able to support multiple ways of learning about and experiencing the future are necessary. In this article we analysed a set of arts-based activities conducted within the five-year EU-funded project IMPRESSIONS aimed at identifying transformative strategies to high-end climate change. The exploratory artistic activities were carried out alongside a science-led participatory integrated assessment process with stakeholders from the Iberian Peninsula. Our arts-based approach combined a range of performative, visual and reflexive practices with the ambition to reach out to more-than-rational but also practical elements of HECC futures. Our study suggests that the arts-based approach helped to bring out new ways of seeing, feeling and interpreting the world which may support the development of individual and collective sensibilities needed to address HECC.

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Environmental Scenario Analysis on Natural and Social-Ecological Systems: A Review of Methods, Approaches and Applications

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12187542 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (18) ◽

pp. 7542 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Noelia Guaita García ◽

Julia Martínez Fernández ◽

Carl Fitz

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Scenario Analysis ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

Distributed Models ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Use Of Models

Scenario analysis is a useful tool to facilitate discussions about the main trends of future change and to promote the understanding of global environmental changes implications on relevant aspects of sustainability. In this paper, we reviewed 294 articles published between 1995–2019, to evaluate the state of the art use of models and scenarios to investigate the effects of land use change and climate change on natural and social-ecological systems. Our review focuses on three issues. The first explores the extent to which the environmental dynamics of land use and climate change were jointly analyzed and the spatial scales associated with such integrated studies. The second explores the modelling methodologies and approaches used in the scenario analysis. The third explores the methods for developing or building scenarios. Results show that in most predictions there is little integration of key drivers of change. We find most forecasting studies use a sectoral modelling approach through dynamic spatially distributed models. Most articles do not apply a participatory approach in the development of scenarios. Based on this review, we conclude that there are some gaps in how scenario analysis on natural and social-ecological systems are conducted. These gaps pose a challenge for the use of models and scenarios as predictive tools in decision-making processes in the context of global change.

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In Situ Observations of the Occlusion of a Clay-Sugar Compound within Calcite

Environmental Science Nano ◽

10.1039/d1en00902h ◽

2022 ◽

Author(s):

Jialin Chi ◽

Chonghao Jia ◽

Wenjun Zhang ◽

Christine V Putnis ◽

Lijun Wang

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Organic Matter ◽

Soil Organic Matter ◽

Organic Carbon ◽

Global Climate Change ◽

Global Climate ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

In Situ Observations ◽

The Stability

The stability of soil organic matter (SOM) plays a key role in controlling global climate change as soil stores a large amount of organic carbon, compared with other ecological systems....

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